12 December 2012

We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry

Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

Paperback, 400 pages

Published July 3rd 2006 by Harper Perennial (first published March 25th 2003)

ISBN:006112429X (ISBN13: 9780061124297)

Scores:

Helen - 10, Carly - 8, Kathleen - 5, Louise - ?, Kerry - 2

31 October 2012

Everything is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.

Paperback, 276 pages

Published April 1st 2003 by Harper Perennial (first published January 1st 2002)

ISBN

0060529709 (ISBN13: 9780060529703)

Scores:

Helen - 3, Carly - 6, Kathleen - 5, Marg - 5, Kerry - 5

12 September 2012

Nice Work

by David Lodge

"A funny, intelligent, superbly paced social comedy." --The New York Times Vic Wilcox, a self-made man and managing director of an engineering firm. has little regard for academics, and even less for feminists. So when Robyn Penrose, a trendy leftist teacher, is assigned to "shadow" Vic under a goverment program created to foster mutual understanding between town and gown, the hilarious collusion of lifestyles and ideologies that ensues seems unlikely to foster anything besides mutual antipathy. But in the course of a bumpy year, both parties make some surprising discoveries about each other's worlds--and about themselves.

Paperback, 277 pages

Published July 27th 1990 by Penguin Books (first published 1988)

ISBN

0140133968 (ISBN13: 9780140133967)

Scores:

Helen - 9, Carly - 7, Kathleen - 8.5, Marg - 9, Kerry - 9